How to turn your house into a Smart Home

The Smappee app offers you insight into your energy consumption and allows you to save energy. But did you know that Smappee can do much more than that? We are completely prepared for the house of the future: known as the Smart Home. Already familiar with this concept? We have listed three ways you can turn your house into a Smart Home.

But first: what is a Smart Home?

In comparison with your house, your car is actually already pretty smart: air conditioning, locking, lights and a whole load of other features are operated almost automatically. Everything responds to your needs, as driver, at the time. At home, however, everything still has to be turned on and off with switches or remote controls. Surely that’s a missed opportunity? Fortunately, more and more ‘smart products’ are being launched on the market that you can operate simply from your smartphone, or that even turn on and off automatically based on your habits. Think of a smart thermostat, for example. All smart electronic appliances can also be connected to each other through the IoT (Internet of Things) in order to make optimal use of the automation possibilities. This is exactly where Smappee can help: whether an electronic device is smart or not so smart, all important household appliances can participate in the Smart Home on the basis of their energy status (on or off).

...and what are Smart Plugs?

If you have a Smappee energy monitor, then you will already have received one smart plug as standard: the Comfort Plug™. You can choose for yourself which device you would like to operate remotely. Wherever you are, you will always have full control over that device and you no longer need to worry about the risk of fire and so on. It can be useful to connect your coffee machine to a Comfort Plug™, for example. This way you can turn it off with one simple tap in the app if you are at work and notice that you forgot to turn it off. Or you can turn your coffee machine on when you're on the way home and want to enjoy a nice cup of coffee straight away. There are dozens more applications for the Comfort Plugs™, so let your creativity run wild!

1. IFTTT

Thanks to the IoT platform IFTTT (If This Then That) you can connect your Smappee to hundreds of other devices and automate the use of these devices. This takes place through formulas. An IFTTT formula consists of a ‘trigger’ (‘if this”’) and an 'action’ (‘then that’). As Smappee detects when an electronic device is turned on or off, on the basis of this (in)activity (‘if this’), another device can be turned on or off (‘then that’). When you're on the way home from work, for example, your Philips Hue lamp can be turned on automatically as soon as the electric garage door opens as you arrive. There are dozens of handy, ready-to-use applets, but you can also create as many formulas as you like yourself.

Go to www.ifttt.com and log in with your Smappee account. You can then go to the Smappee channel via the search bar. The Smappee community has already created dozens of ready-to-go formulas, but you can also design and add your own formulas. To do this, go to ‘My Applets’ and click on ‘New Applet’. To choose your ‘trigger’, click on ‘this’. Search the Smappee channel and choose your trigger. For example: ‘if power rises above ... W’. Then click on ‘that’ and choose the action, such as: ‘turn off plug’. Enjoy!

2. Stringify

The Stringify app goes one step further than IFTTT, by placing triggers and actions in a 'flow'. Where an IFTTT formula is one-to-one with only two components (i.e. one trigger and one action), a Stringify flow can form a chain that connects various apps, wearables and services with each other. In combination with Smappee, household appliances can be integrated into this kind of flow via their energy consumption. For example, if the washing machine is finished (‘if this’), you can receive a notification on your smartphone to put the washing in the airing cupboard (‘then that’) and turn your smart lamps on (‘and that’). Curious? See some Stringify flows here. The more smart devices you have at home, the more you can do!

3. Triggers

Not just on IoT platforms but in the Smappee app itself too there are various triggers that you can activate. Go to ‘Triggers’ in the Smappee app and click on ‘Set new trigger’. Here you can choose the condition that has to be met before an action takes place. Choose the ‘inactivity’ trigger, for example. The Smappee can determine for itself that no one is at home if no appliance is used for a long time. Then you choose the action, such as ‘turn off’. You have now created a trigger. This way, if you forget to turn appliances off when you leave the house, your energy bill won’t contain an unpleasant surprise. You can also set Comfort Plugs™ as an action. To do this, go to the Comfort Plugs™ overview in your app and choose which Comfort Plug™ you would like to include in the formula. You can turn your home office off (using the Comfort Plug™ in your home office) if there is inactivity, for example.